RealNetworks, the company that brought you the RealPlayer media player in the ’90s, is back. It just announced its RealPlayer Cloud, a cloud-based service designed to make it easier to store and share mobile video.

The Wall Street Journal reports the service is much like Instagram or Vine in that it lets users easily upload and share video files, but it’s designed to work with videos more than a few seconds long. Its main competition will likely be Dropbox or SkyDrive, although those services do not focus primarily on video. RealPlayer Cloud lets users of multiple devices store video online, stream and download videos and share them with others, even those that don’t have the RealPlayer software installed. The company says it reformats videos to best suit the particular viewing device, taking into account device type, screen size, bandwidth and storage space. It works on Android and iOS devices, as well as Windows PCs and Roku TV set-top boxes.

Yankee Group Senior Editor Raúl Castañón comments

“It’s been a few years since we last saw any major updates from RealNetworks. The company had focused on desktop, and is now taking the leap into mobile, which is already a crowded space with new players like Vine and Instagram. Can an old dog learn new tricks? Technology-wise, RealPlayer Cloud has the right formula: It is device- and app-agnostic, and combines cloud storage and sharing. More importantly, this formula reflects that RealNetworks is not developing a strategy for the cloud or for mobile, but rather, it is focusing on the user experience, which is about being able to watch video content on any platform.”

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